Magic Leap AR Tech Wows WSJD Live Conference

The most exciting demo at the Wall Street Journal's WSJD Live conference was Magic Leap, an augmented-reality project.

At the Wall Street Journal's WSJD Live conference, the leaders of Sony, Xiaomi, and Micromax talked about their consumer electronics and smartphone businesses, and there were demos of a humanoid robot and a connected oven. However, the most exciting demo was Magic Leap, an augmented reality project that looked fascinating.

The demo involved a video showing a virtual robot bouncing around a physical space, including ducking under the legs of a table, and of a solar system that appears to float on top of a desk.

CEO Rony Abovitz said the video involved no post production or special effects; it did indeed look quite compelling.

Abovitz said the goal with Magic Leap is to provide "cinematic reality"—not traditional augmented reality or virtual reality, but something in the middle. While he didn't get into the technology—when I talked to him later, he said he wasn't ready to disclose whether it would require a headset or glasses—he talked about how in the physical world, we all interact with a light field, and said "we're replicating that" as opposed to today's VR sets, in which you see two flat screens and your mind pushes the images together.

Before starting Magic Leap, Abovitz said he was working in medical technology. He said that one reason VR headsets have a reputation for causing headaches and nausea is because the eye-brain system isn't working the way it expects. Magic Leap is taking a completely different approach, he said, using photonic light fields and visual wave fronts instead of a stereoscopic effect. "The future of computing should feel as natural and normal as everyday life," he said.

Chief Content Officer Rio Caraeff said that the goal is to create a complete computing platform. "Anything you can do on a smart phone or computer you can do with Magic Leap, where the world is your screen," he said. Initial applications include gaming, entertainment, media, and communications, he said, but the company is trying to build a broad-based platform, not a game company.

Abovitz said the company wants to create something very small and light that is self-contained, so you would want to be seen in public with it. He said one goal is to bring people back to their social relationships, rather than having people always looking down at their phones. "The world is your new desktop," he said. Magic Leap, which has raised a lot of money, with Google as its lead investor, is currently setting up a pilot production line in a former Motorola factory in South Florida, and says it needs to build everything from scratch. The product is currently in testing with a number of private developers, but is not yet in public beta, and the company hasn't yet announced when it will be available.

Sony

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai talked about how the company has refocused, spinning off the PC and chemical businesses, and is now focused on image semiconductors, consumer electronics, the PlayStation, entertainment, and finance. He talked about how semiconductors and entertainment were engines of growth, and said the company was committed to staying in the TV business, saying it was necessary for the company's branding (and has recently returned it to profitability).

In regards to the recent hack at Sony Pictures was initially "bad for morale," but he said that since then employees have come around, creating a "more resilient, more strong" organization.

He said the company wasn't looking at autonomous driving per se, but was looking at the automotive market as an application of its imaging sensor technology, though noting that the needs of car makers are quite different from smartphone makers and digital camera makers.

He said the company was getting a lot of positive feedback for its PlayStation VR headset (formerly Project Morpheus), which it plans to launch next year, and suggested it has lots of synergies with the entertainment business, not just in games, saying it provides a "very immersive experience."

Asked about cheaper alternatives, such as Google Cardboard, Hirai said he wouldn't talk about specific competitors, but said it was important for the industry to make sure it was delivering quality technology to customers, saying initially it shouldn't be about how cheaply you can make it, but more about providing a compelling platform. He said PlayStation VR could become more affordable once it becomes a mass market proposition.

Asked what he thought was the defining product of Sony in five years, Hirai didn't suggest one specific product, but rather said Sony needs to inspire kando—the ability to move people emotionally.

Xiaomi

Bin Lin, co-founder and president of Xiaomi, explained how the Chinese company best known for making the smartphones it sells, thinks of itself not as a phone maker or even a consumer electronics companies, but instead as an Internet company.

He showed off pictures of some new products such as a 60-inch 4K TV that will sell for the equivalent of about $680, an air purifier, and a Ninebot mini electronic scooter (which looks like a Segway scooter without the handle—the company recently acquired Segway.)

Bin said the company wants to sell smart consumer electronic products and lots of services around it, with everything connected to the smart phone. Today, he said, the company has 130 million monthly users of its phone services, and while it still gets the most revenue from hardware, it hopes to eventually get more revenue and higher margins from software and services.

Asked about the growth of competitors Apple and Huawei in the Chinese market, Bin said China was changing from a rapidly-growing new adopter market to a replacement market—saying that the smartphone market in China is flat or slightly declining. He said that in China, 30-40 percent of phones are sold online, and he believes the online market will grow faster than the offline market.

He said the basic form factor of smartphones—big display and touch driven input—is unlikely to change in the next 3-5 years, but there will be innovations such as tapping on the edge of the phone to take a picture, improved finger-sensing technologies, and lots of different camera technology, ranging from capturing depth information to optical zoom.

The company is already also selling phones in India, but he wouldn't comment on whether Xiaomi plans to sell phones in the United States.

Micromax

Vikas Jain, co-founder of Micromax Informatics, talked about how quickly the smartphone market was growing in India, where he said they are selling 3.5 million smartphones a month. Instead of just a couple of models, the company comes up with 30 new phones a year—about two-thirds smartphones and one-third feature phones.

This allows for some different models, such as an everything unit, a phone with a keyboard, and one with a mirror back and Swarovski crystals. He noted that auto makers have lots of models. The company, which is also starting to sell in neighboring markets, said the average revenue per user was so low in these markets—perhaps the equivalent of 10 or 15 cents per week—that the company has to make money on the hardware itself, not just on the services.

He said for many people in India, the phone is their connection to the Internet, so needs are evolving quickly; and that the average phone has only a 14-month lifecycle. Physical retail in 120,000 outlets accounts for 85 percent of the company's sales, and Jain said that while e-commerce is evolving, retail won't go away. In general, he said, customers don't delete apps from the phones, but run just a small number of apps, usually the ones pre-installed. "We don't sell technology; we sell experience."

Pepper Robot and June Oven

Some other consumer electronics products were shown at the show. Journal reviewers Geoffrey Fowler and Joanna Stern had an interesting—through rather scripted—conversation with the Pepper robot, a humanoid robot about the size of a child. Pepper was developed by Aldebaran for SoftBank, and is currently being marketed in Japan. Much of the demo was focused on how Pepper can recognize emotions in faces.

Another demo was of the June connected oven, which has a number of custom cooking programs and may be controlled from the front of the oven or from a smartphone application. The oven has a variety of cameras, scales, and heat sensors within the cavity of the oven, as well as a food thermometer, which in the demo was inside a piece of salmon that they cooked on stage, starting from a cool oven, without pre-heating.

The developers said the 1 cubic-foot oven can make nine pieces of toast, and is designed for daily cooking for a family of three to four, with features such as the ability to cook two pieces of steak, each to a different level of doneness. The mobile app looked interesting, with unusual features such as the ability to see your food as it is cooking, and also including taking video and creating a fast-forward movie to post on Instagram. It will sell for about $1500, and is currently available for pre-orders.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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